


Ice Burns

by SaintClaire



Category: The Huntsman (Movies)
Genre: Chess, F/M, Grief, Ice, Little Girls, Lost Baby, Lost children, Resolution, Sisters, aiming for fullfilment, braiding, includes winters war, lonely, love of children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 04:59:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7701724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintClaire/pseuds/SaintClaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ice can burn just as badly as fire, if you let it.  Ice can drip deep into the heart, freezing everything it comes into contact with.  Fire burns everything in it's path.  Ice freezes and grows for as long as it's environment stays the same.  </p><p>Freya's heart is a cold place, locked shut with ice.  Her children melt it, piece by piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice Burns

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been sitting on my desktop for months, because I was never happy that it was finished. I wrote it in about 5 minutes flat after coming home from the movie, but then tweaked it every couple of weeks. I'd really like to know if you guys think I could do anything else with it, or if there's anything you'd like to hear about. The story's sad guys. She still dies at the end.

Ice burns. Not in the same way as fire, perhaps, but the burns travel deep into her skin, her bones, her heart.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The night the children come, in the earliest hours of the morning, she walks down to the rooms they sleep in. All are now asleep, having cried themselves out, curled around blankets and fur in the cold rooms. It is with a frown she notes the candles burning in candelabras – are the children afraid of the dark? She extinguishes them all with a sweep of a finger.

 

 

 

No fire.

 

* * *

 

 

 

It is the grey dawn the children awake to, to find the comforting light of the candles have been blown out in the night. Guards come, and they leave.

 

The queen sits by the cradle, idly stroking it, thinking of the candles in the children’s dormitories. She doesn’t want them to fear the dark.

 

 

She cradles perfect spheres of ice, cold and smooth and beautiful. She calls light into the globe, wrapping her hands around it and pressing her lips to the surface. A ring of the spheres encircle her, carving around her like the petals of a flower, glowing gently. She runs her hands over them all.

 

The children train until dusk, before they move into their dining hall to eat, hungry and cold. They wash and redress, before moving tiredly into the dormitories, thinking only of the fur covered cots in the cold room. The doors open, and they stop short, several surprised ‘ooh’s’ of appreciation.

 

Blue ice globes fill the room. Studded in shallow alcoves in the walls, displayed along the windowsill, one nestled in each child’s blanket, to use as a nightlight. The children smile as they pick up the little blue ice-lights, and for a moment, between the furs on the cots and the smiles of the children and the steady light from the spheres – the room could almost seem warm.

 

The white owl watches from high in the rafters, unseen, as the children climb into their cots, cradling the little globes of ice. Some tuck the little sphere into their chest, wrapped in a corner of their blanket, some set theirs on the floor beside their heads, not even an arm’s length away. The light comforts all of them, and within moments, they begin to fall asleep, tired out from the day of heavy training.

 

Rooms away, a woman in a feather-white mask smiles gently. She will never allow her children to fear the dark because she fears fire.

 

* * *

 

 

 

She does not take a particularly active role in their training. She watches, always watching, either with her own eyes or through a mask of feathers.

 

This doesn’t mean she doesn’t know them.

 

It is one of the littlest children, a new one, who cannot be more than 5 years old. Her eyes follow the Ice Queen’s hair, loose tendrils swinging over her shoulders as she sweeps out of the room, having given her speech, promising safety if they will give up love for her. Later, the owl watches from the rafters as the child carefully tries to pin her hair, attempting an elaborate braid with string tugged from the bottom of her dress and little sticks to use as hairpins. An attempt to copy Freya’s hair. The end result is a tangled mess of hair and string, with twigs poking out.

 

 

Far away, the Queen laughs softly to herself.

 

 

 

She surprises even herself when she walks into the dormitory one day. The little child and another, around the same age sit up in their cots, coughing. They will likely be the first of a bout of the flu. She sits there with them, all afternoon, teaching them how to braid, letting them practice on each other, on her. She leaves before the others return, helping them lie back down, tucking the furs around them.

 

 

Later, the owl watches as the little girls, who, unable to sleep, lie awake fingering the elaborate braids down their backs, tied with ice-white ribbons.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The chessboard sits on the table. One from when they were both younger, before things became so different. There is a certain irony among the pieces. She has always played with the white.

 

Two castles, her palace of ice. Two horses, the polar bears roaming in the hills. Two bishops, Erik and Sarah. A single Queen, with empty arms. A liege of pawns, who have taken on the faces of the huntsmen.

 

Both kings lie, tipped over in the center of the board. They are the weakest of all. She doesn’t play with Kings. She doesn’t play at all.

 

* * *

 

 

Her sisters talks at the crowd of huntsmen in front of them both, Freya looks slightly to the side. She listens to Ravenna speak without hearing the words, just the rich, warm darkness of her tone. It has no place in this castle of ice and light. One of Ravenna’s clawed fingers twitches at her side, catching Freya’s peripheral vision.

 

An odd thought comes to mind. She wants to play chess.

 

* * *

 

 

 

She sees Erik’s face, high in the rafters, over the shaft of a crossbow, as her sister seizes the arrow.

 

It turns out there was a piece of her heart left to break after all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  

 

She can almost pretend as she lies on the floor, that the heavy weight in her arms, is her child.

 

 

When she looks at them, tangled and bloody and desperate in a heap in front of her – it is an errant thought. She would have been proud if her daughter turned out like they did.

 

* * *

 

 

Warmth comes back into her hand, just a little, just enough.

 

A small puddle of water forms under her fingertips. The ice is melting.


End file.
